MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD 



on the floor, a-cavorting and a-bobbing naively, did his 

 prettiest to outvie old Chanticleer. What with the 

 ever onward swing of the quadrille, spiced with an 

 occasional wink of "red eye," the party, though the 

 men were down to shirt sleeves, would begin to get 

 pretty well "het up." Even the old fiddler now roped in 

 a few maverick notes and skipped a bar or two, and 

 "Onery Missouri" Joe didn't want to "know why," 

 when the big paw of a sheepherder left its black im- 

 print just above the waistline of the new "tarltan of 

 his little prairie chicken." 



"Sass-shay all round. Promenade to your seats." 



Dawn would be stealing over the horizon. Most of 

 the guests rode, it might be just a nearby twenty miles, 

 or it might be over the country a bit, fifty or sixty. 



There would also be he-nights in that little gulch 

 with only the males rounded up. Then the stepping 

 would be high as well as lively, and they say — well, 

 no wonder they called it Happy Canyon ; and no won- 

 der when the Round-Up staged the evening show of the 

 frontier town, they named it after the settlement in 

 the halcyon days of the gulch, and made much of the 

 program in replica of its "goin's on" and reproduced 

 as well the canyon walls and snow-capped mountains 

 behind it. 



For the time being you are in a little frontier world 

 of fifty years ago. You look out from the bleachers on 

 its "Main Street," backed by the saloon, Chinese laun- 

 dry, millinery shop, a few smaller shacks, and the hotel 

 all bedecked with signs as witty as they are crude. The 

 hotel is an actual replica of the old Villard house, one 

 of Pendleton's early pioneer hostelries. 



Every phase of the town of the days of Kit Carson, 

 Buffalo Bill, "Peg Leg" Smith, and old "Hank" Cap- 



105 



